“I meant my access within the library,” she said.
“I’m sure you did.”
She smiled tightly at him. “I would ask that you be careful, but knowing you, Master Ethar, I suspect that is unnecessary.”
“I went to try to find answers from the Guardian.”
“The Guardian may not know anything,” she said.
“I had a sense of the Guardian that he knew something, but it’s a matter of being able to speak to him.”
“I’m certain that you were able to speak to him quite well. It’s not so much speaking to them as listening.”
“It is.”
“If the Guardian has an answer, maybe you need to take some time and see if there’s anything you might be able to learn about how to listen to the Guardians.”
“I’ve tried. I think about what he was saying to me, the way he was saying it, and all I heard over and over again was the bond.”
“That’s why you went to the Convergence.”
Tolan nodded.
“And you think there’s something more in what he was telling you.”
“I’m sure of it. You could help with that, as well.”
“I think my strength is not in reaching for the Guardians. Besides, in this case, I think you’re right that we need to better understand what he intends.”
The door to the tower opened and Ferrah stepped out. She had Jersan with her, and he looked over at Tolan before his gaze settled Master Minden, his eyes widening slightly.
“You’re bringing the younger of the two students,” she said.
“He’s the one connected to the elementals,” Tolan said. That was what he figured he needed, though Kelvin might know more about Telfair.
Master Minden tapped him on the arm, and a sense of spirit washed through him. It was a reassuring sense, but it also reverberated within him, almost as if she had wanted to try to trigger something within him. Tolan inhaled deeply and turned to Ferrah and Jersan. Master Minden left them, closing the door behind her.
“What was that about?” Ferrah asked.
“Just a brief conversation.”
He turned to Jersan. He was dressed in Academy clothing and looked at everything with something of a wide-eyed stare. Given his age, he shouldn’t be quite so intimidated.
“How has your adjustment to the Academy gone?” Tolan asked.
“I suppose as well as possible. It’s… difficult.”
Tolan looked over at Ferrah. “When I came to the Academy, I wasn’t able to shape at all.”
Jersan opened his mouth, and it seemed as if you’re going to argue, but he shifted the nature of what he was going to say. “You weren’t able to shape at all?”
Tolan shook his head. “Not at all. I could sense mostly. I could use earth, but not many of the elements.”
“Why did they bring you to the shaping Academy here in Amitan?” Jersan swept his gaze around the city before turning his attention back to Tolan.
“I had the same question at the time. I didn’t know. The Selection was believed to be infallible, and even though I wasn’t able to shape, the master shapers believed I was meant to be here.”
“They’ve told me if we fail the first level, we’re forced to serve.”
“That’s what they told me, as well.”
“How many fail the first level?”
Tolan glanced at Ferrah. He didn’t really want to reveal that as far as he knew, none had ever truly failed. The Academy worked with everyone who passed the Selection, in order to gain the knowledge needed to serve in some way.
“It’s not common,” he said.
“I’ve heard about you,” Jersan said softly. “There are stories the other first-level students share about you. Apparently when you were a student, the Draasin Lord attacked and you were involved in those attacks?”
“That is true,” Tolan said.
“How was a student involved in that?”
“By chance. And because I like to get into trouble.”
Ferrah laughed bitterly.
“I can’t shape the way they want. I don’t know if I just can’t, or maybe I haven’t learned. It’s just… hard.”
“All I can say is keep trying,” Tolan said. “I felt the same way, but eventually, something within me awoke.”
He didn’t know how to do the same for Jersan. There were some shapers who simply were able to shape only a single element. Some were able to shape more than one. It wasn’t up to him to determine who was able to reach them.
“Is that all you needed from me?” He glanced over at Ferrah as he said it, mostly as if realizing that he wasn’t sure if he should’ve said something in front of her.
“Not exactly. I needed you for something else back in Telfair.”
“Why would you have us go back there?”
Tolan shifted his feet, looking out over the city. He detected a faint energy of power, different than what he’d detected in the past. “What have you detected of earth?”
Ferrah frowned at him.
“Why?” he asked.
“Have you detected anything different about it?”
“I’m not as well-connected to earth as I am to wind.”
“That’s not true. You can speak to the earth elemental, so I know you have a connection to earth. Has your connection to the elemental suggested anything to you?”
“I haven’t heard anything from the elemental in quite some time.”
It seemed to Tolan that he hesitated in admitting that, almost as if afraid that by doing so, he would be acknowledging he wasn’t going to be able to reach the elementals again.
“Something changed with the bond,” Tolan said.
“Are you sure that you—”
Tolan shook his head, interrupting Ferrah. He needed to have some honesty with the other man. If nothing else, he needed to share with him and get him to share in return.
“I don’t exactly know what happened, but something changed with the element bond, and it seems to me it’s tied to what happened when we were in Telfair.”
“We weren’t doing anything to the element bonds.” Jersan sounded almost petulant.
“I know that you weren’t. You were speaking to the elemental. Jinnar shared with me that you don’t listen, but that’s not a reason for you to have angered an elemental. That wasn’t anything that would have changed the bond.”
“I haven’t detected anything different about the bond,” Jersan said.
Tolan studied him, debating what to share. “I have. I’m not exactly sure what it is, or what it means, but whatever it is has altered enough that I need to investigate.”
“You’re going to carry us all there?”
“I am.”
“It took the better part of the day the last time. I do have classes, and—”
“I have another way of traveling.”
Tolan reached for each of the elements, realizing he utilized only his connection to earth and not the bond, and added spirit as he merged them all together. When he pulled a shaping from them, a burst of lightning streaked across the sky, shooting toward him.
Jersan cried out and the lightning bolt carried them, lifting them toward Telfair.
Within the shaping, there was a sense of strangeness. Tolan tried to hold onto it, trying to orient it, but the warrior shaping started to drift.
Within the warrior shaping, things happened quickly. He tried to control the shell of energies around him, but there was a shifting that started to stagger the shaping.
It was coming apart.
Tolan reached for more of his connection to earth, trying to grab onto that, but realized that was part of the problem. He had to bind the shaping together, but he wasn’t able to do it by using earth through the element bonds. He had to release that connection.
He relaxed. Shifting the nature of earth, he held on to only earth through himself. The other elements overpowered it and Tolan had to change the nature of the others, withdrawing all of them.
/> When they landed, they did so far from his destination.
Ferrah stared at him. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Tolan said.
“What kind of shaping is that?” Jersan asked.
Tolan looked around. They were in a rocky landscape that reminded him of the waste—and of what he had seen when he had been within the earth bond. His heart hammered and he tried to ignore the sweat streaming from his brow. He’d never felt the warrior shaping go awry.
But it had.
Tolan was sure it was because of his earth bond.
What would happen if I were to use my own connection to shaping; avoiding the connection to earth?
Maybe it was only because he had delved into the earth bond. Whatever Roland had done had affected him.
Tolan tried to focus. “Wait here,” he said.
“Tolan—”
“Wait here.”
He pulled on the other elements, staying away from the bond, thinking about how he shaped when he was within the waste. He reached for them, letting them wrap around him, and then he added spirit. Tolan carried himself only a short distance. Ten paces. Nothing more. If the warrior shaping was to go awry, he would need control over it enough that he wouldn’t end up hundreds of miles farther than where he intended.
The shaping took him up, then back down. There was nothing unusual about it. There was only the sense of the shaping, nothing that worried him. When he emerged from the warrior shaping, stepping forward, he looked over at Ferrah.
“The bond. We have to be careful with earth now,” he said.
“I don’t detect that, though,” she said.
“Maybe it’s only because I went into the bond, but—”
“You went into the bond? How is that even possible?” Jersan said.
“Are you sure that you can do this?” Ferrah asked.
Tolan breathed in. It wasn’t a matter of not being able to shape. He had enough energy and strength, and unlike in the waste where he’d be cut off from power and forced to pull upon his own strength, here there was nothing that separated him. He was able to recharge himself; drawing upon more strength.
He worried about the fact that he was drawing upon the strength of the earth bond, and that it was that power that started to refill him, but if it did so, it was without him having any active involvement in it.
He walked across the distance between himself and Ferrah before taking both her and Jersan by the arm. He glanced from one to the other, reaching for each of the elements, and bound them together before adding spirit. When the lightning bolt struck, carrying them up and toward Telfair, Tolan tensed in way he was not accustomed to when using the shaping. He hesitated, holding onto that power, afraid of releasing it in a way that would cause him danger. He feared losing control over it. If he were to lose control, he didn’t know where they would end up or what might happen to them.
The shaping carried them all the way to Telfair.
As soon as they stepped free of it, Tolan recognized that something was off. It pressed upon him through his sense of spirit. It was an emptiness.
All of the people who had been within Telfair were either gone—or they were dead.
18
Tolan looked up at Jersan, and he wondered how much of this he would be aware of. He didn’t know how much he needed to share with him, but this was Jersan’s home. These were his people. If it had happened to Tolan’s home, he would want to know.
Ferrah took his hand, pulling him off to the side. She used a hint of wind, swirling around, and Tolan added fire to it, sealing them off from Jersan.
“Why do I get the sense that something is wrong?” Ferrah asked. “You’re not telling me something. Not that I’m surprised by that these days.”
Tolan ignored the comment. “Because something is wrong.” Tolan focused on spirit, pushing outward as he had when they had been here before. He used the same sort of shaping Master Minden had, probing everything in front of him, and in doing so, he wasn’t able to detect the sense of anyone. The village had comprised almost eighty people before. Not a lot, but certainly enough that he should have some sense of them pushing on his awareness.
There was nothing.
What had taken place here?
“I don’t detect anyone.”
“No one?”
“There were quite a few people before. It’s not a large village, but when I came with Master Minden, we were able to detect the others. I thought we would be able to sense them by now.”
“What if they left because of what happened here before?”
“What would have taken them away?” Tolan asked.
Unless they were all connected to earth in some way. When they’d been here, he remembered the nature of the pit, the way that each home had one within it, and he remembered the sense of earth and power that existed within the village. It was unusual, especially compared to some of the places they’d visited, but not completely unique. There were other places tied to the elements—and the elementals—in ways the people did not know about.
If they were all well-connected to earth, they might have known something had shifted within the bond. Knowing that, they might have taken that opportunity to go somewhere else. If that were the case, then Tolan would have to figure out why—and where they would have gone.
He took a deep breath, focusing on what he could detect, and he headed across the distance to the village. Jersan stayed with him, and Tolan was tempted to tell him to stay back, but he wasn’t sure that was the right answer. If something had happened here, then Jersan should know. Kelvin would have to know, too.
They reached the outskirts of the village, and Jersan stopped. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I can feel it.”
“What can you feel?” If Jersan could reach spirit, then it would explain his connection to the elementals. Maybe Jersan would be able to speak to the elementals. It seemed to Tolan that spirit was the key.
“Earth is off.”
“That might be nothing more than the element bonds,” Tolan said.
“Maybe.”
Tolan stopped at one of the homes and tested the door before pushing it open. Jersan stood framed in the doorway, staring for a moment. Jersan’s back stiffened, and when he closed the door, he turned to Tolan.
“What did you find?” Tolan asked.
“She wasn’t there,” Jersan said.
“Who isn’t?” Ferrah asked.
“My sister.”
Somehow, Tolan had forgotten Jersan would have family here, but of course he did. His parents might have even been here.
Had he given Jersan and Kelvin the opportunity to say something to the rest of the village, to let them know that they were taking them away for the Selection, then perhaps…
Perhaps nothing. Taking the shapers away to the Academy was a part of the Academy. It was a part of all who lived within Terndahl. There was nothing that Jersan’s departure would have done that would have changed anything like that.
They stopped at the next building. Much like the last one, it was empty. Jersan started to move more quickly, going door to door, checking on each of them.
After he checked about a dozen, he turned to Tolan, the color drained out of his face. “They’re all gone.”
“That was my fear,” Tolan said.
“You knew?” Jersan glared at Tolan, and the earth began to rumble.
“Easy,” Tolan said.
“If this is your fault—”
“It’s not my fault. I came here to try to better understand earth, not because of anything that happened to your village. I didn’t realize anything was amiss until we got here.”
Roland had to be involved, but what had he done?
“How did you know?” Jersan asked.
“I could feel it,” Tolan said. “Through spirit.”
Jersan took a deep breath, and he glanced from Tolan to Ferrah before heading through the rest of the village, going from door to door. Tolan let him.
“Roland did something to them. It means he’s crossed the waste.” That worried him. The waste had served as a barrier that had prevented him from crossing before.
Tolan followed the sense of Jersan and found him near the edge of the village. Jinnar had rumbled forward, coming forth from the earth, and stood across from Jersan. There was power coming from the elemental, but as Tolan focused on it, there was something else mixed within it.
Was it the strange feeling of the earth bond?
If something changed for the elementals as well, that would affect more than just the earth bond. He joined Jersan, sitting across from jinnar, looking at the earth elemental. He could hear the elemental rumbling, attempting to speak to Jersan.
Could Jersan hear anything?
Jinnar had said that Jersan spoke but was unable to listen. Maybe he could listen now. Jersan held onto a connection to earth. Power radiated from him, and it washed toward jinnar.
“Where did they go?” Jersan was saying.
The elemental continued to rumble, letting that power radiate from him.
Tolan listened, focusing on what he was able to detect of the elemental, and thought about the energy coming off him, sensing the effort of what the elemental was saying, and couldn’t hear anything more.
He mixed spirit, adding earth, pushing outward.
By mingling the two, the rumbling started to shift. Tolan could hear a muted and muffled sound, but it was different than what he’d heard when he’d been with the elemental before. It was almost as if some aspect of his ability to understand the elemental had changed.
“Can you still understand me?” Tolan asked.
Jinnar shifted and turned toward Tolan. The elemental had a strange appearance. It was all rock and limbs, and a massive stone head that swiveled toward him. There were no eyes, but there was a sense of power coming off jinnar.
“The bond,” the sense came.
It was a rumbling energy, and it rolled through the ground, filling Tolan.
“I know something is wrong with the bond, and I’ve been trying to understand what it is, but I don’t know. Can you help me understand?”
The Shape of Fire Page 19